“I came to see it as a strange, very Kabuki kind of thing, very performative. Your job is to have a lot to say up to a point. … There were things it wasn’t cool to say. There were people you weren’t supposed to mention anymore. When I got to be one of the cool kids, all I was supposed to do was answer questions about the cool kids and act like there were no other kids around.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Hilary Mantel Writing Two Sequels To Wolf Hall
Mantel’s multi-award-winning novel about Thomas Cromwell will be part of a trilogy. The second volume, titled Bring Up the Bodies and concentrating on the downfall of Anne Boleyn, will appear next May. Part Three, The Mirror & the Light, will recount Cromwell’s own ruin and execution.
The Torah – Is It Mosaic, Or A Mosaic?
“In a marriage of traditional biblical scholarship and the latest in computerized textual analysis, a team of Israeli scholars has … [given further support to] a scholarly consensus that the Torah, traditionally attributed solely to Moses, is based on two primary sources.”
Holding Together The Pieces Of Frederick Ashton’s Ballets
On top of all the usual difficulties of preserving an art form as ephemeral as dance, Ashton had a problematic attitude toward his artistic legacy: As he himself put it, “F*** posterity!” Tony Dyson, founder of the Ashton Trust talks about how he and his colleagues keep Ashton’s ballets alive on stage.
Salzburg Festival Commissions Four New Operas
“The Salzburg Festival has embarked on an ambitious program to commission contemporary work under new artistic director Alexander Pereira. New operas will be coming from composers György Kurtág, Marc-André Dalbavie, Thomas Adès and Jörg Widmann, Pereira announced Thursday.”
Umberto Eco Thinks He Has Written His Last Novel
“Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking. In two months I will be eighty years old. Probably I will not write another novel, and so mankind will be safe.”
Unknown Tagore Manuscript Discovered
“A rare notebook, unheard of before, belonging to Nobel laureate and Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore will be auctioned in New York in December. … It contains 12 hand-written Bengali poems and 12 lyrics for Bengali songs.”
Sedition: A New Platform For Limited-Edition Digital Artworks
The venture “has signed up some impressive names, including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Shepard Fairey. These artists will produce pieces in editions of between 2,000 and 10,000, which are numbered, signed and sold for between $8 and $800, with Sedition taking a cut of the revenue.”
Female Egyptian Activist Posts Nude Self-Portrait Online, Brouhaha Ensues
“In the United States, leaking a nude self-portrait is an embarrassing rite of passage for celebrities. In Egypt, it’s an act of political defiance. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy received praise and condemnation for posting a nude self-portrait and other nude photos on her blog as an act of personal expression.”
#OccupyWallStreet Vs. #TeaParty – A Twitter Comparison
“Those tweeting about the Tea Party emerge as a tight-knit ‘in crowd’, following one another’s tweets. By contrast, the network of people tweeting about Occupy consists of a looser series of clusters, in which the output of a few key people is being vigorously retweeted.”